Best Small Business Web Hosting: Godaddy vs. HostGator vs. BlueHost

In this buyer’s guide, we provide you with the information you need to select the best web hosting provider for your small business. We looked at the most popular options and will be comparing GoDaddy vs. HostGator vs. Bluehost. We found that these 3 companies cover the range for small businesses in terms of customer support, bandwidth, and server support. Read on for our comparison and review of these three options, as well as our top recommendations.

We recommend GoDaddy because they have the best customer service, reliable speed and performance, and are the most affordable option. We use them to host a few of our websites, and our experience has been very positive.

Note: Each web hosting company has multiple hosting options (shared, cloud, WordPress, VPS, and dedicated), and multiple pricing plans within each hosting option. This can quickly become overwhelming, so we are only discussing the lowest cost plan in the shared hosting option. For a description of all hosting options, go to the bottom of this article.

This guide is for small business owners who do not expect an enormous amount of traffic to their website. If you get more than 500 visitors per day to your website, this is not the guide for you. If you have a small business website that gets fewer than 500 visitors a day, keep reading.

We use GoDaddy for some of our sites and believe it’s the best option for small business owners who receive a modest amount of traffic (fewer than 500 visitors a day) to their site. They have fast and friendly customer support who will take the time to walk you through setting up the hosting, installing WordPress (for your blog), or whatever else you need. When we have needed customer support for our sites, they have always been very helpful.

GoDaddy is also an economical option. While the price does goes up after your first term is over, it is still the least expensive option of the three when you combine the yearly cost of hosting + the domain cost. GoDaddy is the only one out of the three that gives you a free domain name for the life of your plan (up to 3 years). For these two reasons, we believe GoDaddy is the best option for small business owners.

In a head to head competition of 10 of the top web hosting providers, HostGator emerged as having both the fastest site response time, and most dependable uptime. While both of these qualities are very important in a web hosting provider, we did not feel that having the best page speed and uptime was a good enough reason to rank HostGator #1. The reason for this is twofold:

GoDaddy and Bluehost were both very close behind on both response time and uptime, and were only slower by fractions of a second.

We feel that customer support and price are more important than minimal differences in speed and performance when it comes to web hosting providers.

HostGator did not stack up to GoDaddy when it came to quality of customer support or price.

Bluehost is the only web hosting provider that offers a prorated refund after the 30 day, full money back guarantee period is over. So even though you have to purchase at least 1 year of web hosting up front, if you decide to cancel after 4 months, for example, you will receive your money back for the remaining 8 months of your hosting term.

This is a great perk since all of the web hosting options offer big discounts if you sign up for multi year contracts. With Bluehost, you can sign up for a 3-year plan (and save $2/month) more comfortably because you have the option to cancel at any time. If you sign up for a 3 year plan with GoDaddy or HostGator in order to receive their multi-year discounts, you will not be able to cancel after the 30-45 day trial period.

In-Depth Review: GoDaddy vs. HostGator vs. Bluehost

Pricing

All of the web hosting providers offer three different pricing options for the shared hosting plan, and offer discounts for the first contract term. Though most small business websites with fewer than 500 visitors a day should be fine with the lowest cost option, we will compare the main differences between the three shared hosting options.

Depending on the company, the increase in subscription level will get you secure sockets layer (SSL) certificates (helpful if you sell products online or accept customers’ personal information or credit card information on your site), faster speed, unlimited websites, site backup, and even a free phone system.

Customer Support

Good quality customer support is extremely important with web hosting providers. If your website goes down, you need to be able to contact someone immediately to help you with the issue. You will also want someone who can help you through the process of getting your hosting setup if you don’t have much technical experience.

GoDaddy: GoDaddy provides 24/7/365 phone support, as well as live chat and self-help forums for its customers. We have used them for web hosting, and they are able to provide friendly, helpful customer service.They also have a very fast response time.

HostGator: HostGator has 24/7/365 phone, live chat, and email support. They also have a very comprehensive self-help knowledge base. When looking at multiple user reviews online, it seems that customers are mostly satisfied with HostGator’s customer support.

Bluehost: Phone support and live chat support are available 24/7/365. Online user reviews seem pretty split between people loving or hating the customer service they received.

Server Speed and Performance

The speed and performance of your website are only as good as the server that hosts your website. This is measured by a website’s uptime and response time.

Uptime is the time during which the server is up and running, and is important because if the server is down, people will not be able to access your website. Response time is how long the server takes to deliver content to visitors to your website. Slow response times will frustrate visitors, and may cause them to leave your site.

GoDaddy: GoDaddy has a 99.9% uptime guarantee, which means that they will credit you for any excess downtime. The hosting provider is very stable, and response time is above average for web hosts, but not as fast as HostGator.

HostGator: HostGator guarantees 99.9% uptime, and according to Host Benchmarker, has a faster website response time than GoDaddy and Bluehost.

Bluehost:Bluehost uptime and response time are both not as good as HostGator and GoDaddy, but they are not very far behind.

Website Domain

Obtaining a website domain name (ex: www.yourwebsite.com) is an important step in creating your website.

GoDaddy: GoDaddy offers a free domain for the full duration of your 12, 24, or 36 month plan. After your initial term is over, you must pay a renewal rate, typically around $15 per year.

HostGator: HostGator does not include a free domain with their plan. The cost for a .com domain is $12.95 per year.

Bluehost: Bluehost offers a free domain for just the first year, even if you sign up for a longer term plan. The renewal rate after the first year is up to $15.99.

Email Accounts

Each of the three hosts provide free business email accounts (e.g. johnsmith@yourbusiness.com). For ease of use, we recommend you follow our instructions to manage your inbox in Gmail.

Web Hosting Bandwidth/Storage

Bandwidth refers to the amount of traffic that your website can receive. Though all of the web hosting providers claim to have no restrictions on bandwidth, there is a cap to the amount of visitors that can come to your site. That’s because bandwidth is like a road. Yes, there’s no cap to the amount of cars allowed, but the more cars there are, the slower the traffic will move.

If you have a sudden spike in traffic, you won’t need to pay more, but your website will either crash or move very slowly. That is why if you expect more than 500 visitors per day to your site, you should go with a different option besides the shared hosting plan that we are discussing in this guide.

Storage is the amount of files you can upload to your website. Although HostGator offers unlimited storage with their plan, your site will move pretty slowly if you go upload too many files.

Bluehost:Bluehost has a 30 day full money back guarantee. They are the only company that also offers prorated refunds if you decide to cancel after the 30 day period is over.

Web Hosting Options

If you search around these three web hosting websites, you’ll notice that they all offer multiple types of hosting options. We will define what each of the options mean, and when you should go with an option other than shared hosting.

Shared hosting

With shared hosting, you are sharing a server with other websites. This makes it the most affordable option, but since it’s shared, it can’t handle as much traffic or storage as you would get if you had your own server. This is the option we are focused on in this buyer’s guide, and is appropriate for small business owners who don’t expect a ton of traffic.

Cloud hosting

This model is more scalable since it lets you pay based on the amount of traffic that comes to your site. The cloud is made up of multiple servers, and usage can be distributed amongst the servers if there is a large traffic spike. This is different than shared hosting which only uses one server, and cannot handle a big increase in traffic. Cloud hosting is a good option for a business with large amounts of unpredictable traffic.

WordPress hosting

This plan is specifically for WordPress websites. It includes automatic updates to your WordPress site, and has a dashboard that was created with WordPress in mind. Consider this option if you have a WordPress website, and want WordPress updates handled automatically. Keep in mind that the WordPress hosting plans are more expensive than the comparable shared hosting options. While it is more convenient because of the auto updates, you don’t need to use a WordPress hosting plan for a WordPress site.

Virtual private server hosting (VPS)

With this option, the server is still shared, but it is divided up, and you get a specific amount of dedicated space on that server. This is the right option for you if you want to have more control over the configuration and what you can install on the server.

Dedicated hosting

This is the most expensive option, as you get your very own server that is not shared with any other websites. This means you have full control over the configuration, and if there is an issue with your site, it’s easier to tell where the problem is coming from. This option is best for large businesses that want full control over their settings.

All Web Hosting Companies

Here is a list of the web hosting companies we researched before deciding on our top three picks. Go here to read user reviews of all the most popular web hosting companies for small business owners.

Bottom Line

Hopefully you found our review of GoDaddy vs. HostGator vs. Bluehost useful and informative. When choosing your web hosting provider, you want a fair price, fast and friendly customer service, and reliable and stable hosting performance. We feel that GoDaddy does great on all three counts, which is why we chose them as our recommended web hosting company for small business owners.

Want to know the best option for building your website? View our website builder buyer’s guide to learn more.

About the Author

Maggie Aland is a staff writer for Fit Small Business and editor of the Marketing and Reviews sections. She writes on a variety of marketing topics, ranging from newspaper ads to how to market your business on Facebook. Before joining Fit Small Business, Maggie worked as a marketing associate at a niche publishing company. There she was responsible for determining the marketing plan and keeping up with the budget of 10+ B2B products. Her experience includes email, direct mail, social media, events, and more. When not editing or writing, you can find Maggie looking for the best brunch spots in NYC.

I found Hostgator to be difficult to work with and slow. it took a full two days to get a domain name transferred and support would rather argue with me than to help. Their web site reports “error!” rather than status information and they tell me that is what they intend it to do.

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